What are the best upcoming IPOs to watch?

Upcoming UK IPOs

1. Monzo
2. BrewDog
3. Shein
4. Starling
5. Zopa
6. McLaren
7. Gousto
8. Virgin Atlantic
9. GymShark
10. Huel
11. Asda
12. Waterstones
13. Boots
14. Unilever Ice Cream

Monzo

Monzo is an online bank with more than nine million retail customers and over 400,000 business clients. It remains one of the leading UK innovators offering a non-traditional option to banking. Alongside its upcoming IPO, Monzo is also focusing on US expansion plans.

Monzo raised $610 million in 2024, valuing the business at $5.2 billion post-money, and has since seen its valuation rise to $5.9 billion. Although there has been little talk of an IPO in recent months, it’s reported the company is still exploring the idea and we could see it float in 2025.

In its annual report for the year ending February 2023, Monzo reported net operating income of £214.5 million, almost doubling year-over-year. However, losses came in at a substantial £116.3 million, with the revenue bump only driven by net interest income, which increased by 382% to £164.2 million. And interest rates are falling.

BrewDog

BrewDog started out of garage in Aberdeenshire in 2007. The company’s crowdfunding route, which proved vital in its early years, secured them about 200,000 investors.

The company announced plans to launch several years ago, but for a number of reasons, which include market volatility and allegations surrounding the negative treatment of workers, it held off.

BrewDog’s CEO Adam Watt has now stepped back from the business. But he turned BrewDog into a beer industry titan, with annual revenues exceeding £300 million derived from breweries across three continents and 130 bars around the world.

Shein

Fast fashion giant Shein originally wished to launch in the US but has since pivoted to the UK’s market.

Despite facing criticism for poor working conditions and its negative environmental impact, the Chinese online retailer has seen its sales surpass those of H&M and Zara in the fast fashion market. They’ve even expanded the manufacturing of their products to Turkey, Brazil and India.

It’s not yet clear exactly how much the company is currently worth, but their most recent valuation reached $66 billion, down from $100 billion in April 2022. A significant reason for this down valuation has been accusations of malpractice in its supply chain, alongside global efforts to combat the environmental damage of fast fashion.

Starling

Starling, like Monzo, is also one of the UK’s leading digital-only banks. It was founded in 2014 by Anne Boden, a former Lloyds banking executive. Starling now boasts more than two million accounts including 300,000 business accounts.

In its most recent financial year, the UK digital banking group reported a 54.7% increase in pre-tax profits to £301.1 million. Meanwhile, revenue grew by 50.6% to reach £682.2 million, while total deposits were up 4% to £11bn.

This was the third straight year of profitability for the group — and it recently appointed a new CEO, Raman Bhatia, perhaps to help take it public.

Zopa

Zopa has been credited with inventing the concept of peer-to-peer lending with its launch in 2004. It went on to grow a multi-billion-pound consumer lending business, before opting to exit the market in December 2021 to focus on its digital banking business.

The company has made several recent changes to its senior management team, hiring Peter Donlon and Kate Erd, both of whom have many years of experience in finance, to help grow the company further as it prepares to launch an IPO.

In 2023, loans on the balance sheet grew by 27% year-over-year to £2.7 billion. And Zopa launched its next generation credit models that deliver 15% lower risk and allowed it to expand lending growth by 14%. There is currently £3.4 billion in customer deposits.

Zopa continues to put off IPO plans, however, given the lack of market liquidity caused by higher rates.

McLaren

Founded in 1963 by Bruce McLaren, McLaren is a household name in motorsport, and also a well-regarded premium car brand. Its separate divisions reunified following the departure of CEO Ron Dennis in 2017 and investors have pondered an IPO ever since.

Bahrain’s sovereign wealth fund, Mumtalakat Holding Company, recently became the sole shareholder of McLaren — but there is still hope for a public launch in stronger economic times. Investors may dream for a public reception similar to Porsche AG’s.

Gousto

Gousto is a food delivery service famous for being backed by fitness influencer Joe Wicks. The company has been struggling with a complex corporate governance row after excluding some longstanding investors from its most recent £50 million capital raising.

For perspective, Gousto was valued at £1.4 billion in 2022, but this fell to just £250 million in mid-2023 as higher rates and a market no longer subjected to pandemic lockdowns saw sales fall to more realistic levels.

This stock could choose to IPO to access capital on better terms, especially as monetary policy comes back to more ‘normal’ levels. In 2023, Gousto saw underlying EBITDA rise to £26 million compared to the loss of £8 million in 2022, driven by cost discipline and tech use.

Virgin Atlantic

Virgin Atlantic’s IPO has been a long time coming. The British airline owns and operates flights and holidays to locations all over the world, but generates the lion’s share of its revenue on the lucrative trans-Atlantic flights between the UK and the US. 51% of the shares are owned by Sir Richard Branson and the remaining 49% by US titan Delta.

It struggled with a pre-tax loss of £139 million in fiscal 2023, but this was an improvement on the 2022 loss of £206 million. For perspective, revenue rose to £3.1 billion, it flew 5.3 million passengers and enjoyed a decent load factor of 77%.

And Virgin Atlantic expects to see a return to profitability this year.

GymShark

Gymshark remains an on-trend activewear brand, seeing revenue in the fiscal year to June 2023 rise by 15% to £556.2 million — though profit before tax fell from £27.8 million to £13.1 million in the same period.

Despite the effects of inflation on materials and labour, alongside the suppressive effect of the cost-of-living crisis, last Black Friday was the best single sales day the company has ever enjoyed. And with its flagship shop on Regent Street in London, a UK IPO to generate further expansion capital could well be in the works.

Huel

Huel is a direct-to-consumer vegan meal replacement business that is now arguably the sector industry leader. The British retailer perhaps owes its rapid growth to the pandemic, and to the rise of fitness and health as a social media segment.

Huel’s allergen-free meal replacement powder is marketed as a complete replacement to normal food, and it is also diversified into shakes and instant meals.

Huel was valued at £440 million in 2023, and saw sales increase by 28% year-over-year to £184 million in the fiscal year to July. Perhaps more excitingly, pre-tax profits were £4.7 million, swinging from a £10.6 million loss the year before.

Asda

Asda has been in the hands of the Issa brothers for years — but when private equity outfit CD&R took Morrison’s private, the stock market lost a major supermarket. Nature tends to abhor a vacuum.

In fiscal 2023 the retailer saw revenue increase by 7.1% year-over-year to £21.9 billion, while net profit came in at a favourable £195 million compared to the loss of £354 million in FY22. Accordingly, adjusted EBITDA rose by some 24.3% to circa £1.1 billion. And perhaps surprisingly, management highlight that clothing brand George is now the ‘third largest UK clothing retailer by volume.’

The company is also midway through its three-point recovery, and a public launch may not be too far away.

Waterstones

Part of a group that includes Barnes & Noble in the USA, Waterstones is by far the most well-known bookseller brand on this side of the Atlantic. Together, the brands span 1,000 shops and generate billions every year in sales.

CEO James Daunt — who has helped the brand go from a Christmas-only profit maker to year-round money spinner — recently noted that an IPO would be ‘a very sensible place’ for the group, noting that it would ‘pay a very nice dividend for a pension fund-type investment rather than being in private equity.’

He last considered an IPO in 2018 ahead of its sale to private equity Elliott, but this was delayed as Elliott was also in the process of buying Barnes & Noble. The book chains have defied all critics, adding masses of shops over the past few years despite heavy competition from Amazon. And there is also potential for further US growth.

Boots

Boots is the largest health, beauty and pharmacy chain in the UK. Its US-based owner, Walgreens, continues to alternate between attempting to sell Boots to a variety of private equity firms for its desired £7 billion price tag, and an IPO at around the same value.

Boots now has circa 2,220 shops employing 55,000 people — and would clearly be a highly desired launch. For the fiscal year to August 2023, Boots saw sales rise by 8% year-over-year to over £7 billion, driving operating profit up 60% to £88 million.

Boots said that the revenue was ‘impacted by government agencies seeking to minimise increases in the costs of healthcare, including pharmaceutical drug reimbursement rates.’

Unilever Ice Cream

Unilever is a FTSE 100 titan, and its ice cream brands including Magnum, Ben & Jerry's and Wall's generate annual sales worth some £6.8 billion. However, the company has announced it will spin off the division by the end of 2025 — perhaps in the Netherlands though London is equally likely.

For context, the division is headquartered in the Netherlands, though the parent is a stalwart component of the London market. In 2023, the sector saw sales growth of just 2.3% with volumes falling by some 6%; a spin-off is likely needed to see its value realised.

And Unilever has previously spun off Birds Eye, Flora and PG Tips — it has form.

Upcoming US IPOs

The American IPO space, particularly its tech stocks, shows no sign of slowing down in 2023. Are these the best upcoming US IPOs?

1. Open AI
2. SpaceX
3. Intel PSG
4. Databricks
5. Revolut
6. Discord
7. Klarna
8. Stripe
9. Stubhub

OpenAI

OpenAI raised $6.6 billion in a private fundraising round during early October 2024 at a $157 billion valuation. Thrive Capital led OpenAI’s oversubscribed round, joined by Nvidia, Microsoft, Fidelity, Altimeter Capital Management, Khosla Ventures, SoftBank, MGX and Tiger Global.

Pitchbook data now suggests that the San Francisco company is worth substantially more than any venture capital-backed firm at the time of their IPO, including both Meta Platforms and Uber.

For context, OpenAI is now the third most valuable venture capital-backed company in the world, second only to SpaceX and TikTok owner ByteDance.

The New York Times has seen company documents suggesting that OpenAI expects to lose $5 billion while generating $3.7 billion in revenue in 2024. The paper also quoted an anonymous company source saying that OpenAI generated $300 million in revenue in September 2024, an increase of 1,700% compared to September 2023.The same source also notes the company expects to generate $11.6 billion in sales next year.

A potential IPO could see markets surge.

SpaceX

SpaceX is as hotly anticipated as OpenAI. Founded and operated by Elon Musk, the business has now grown into the dominant force in aerospace — and was the first privately funded outfit to send a mission to the International Space Station.

Musk’s lofty ambitions for SpaceX includes sending mankind to Mars, and hugely reducing the cost of space travel. SpaceX’s reusable Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets are revolutionary in the sector. And its Starship project is being exclusively developed to ferry astronauts from Earth to Mars — most recently, SpaceX ‘caught’ Starships’ rocket booster on its return to Earth.

The company is also a global leader in satellite technology through subsidiary Starlink, which boasts hundreds of satellites providing global internet coverage.

SpaceX has raised $11.9 billion across 30 funding rounds, though at private valuations

Intel Programmable Solutions Group

American technology company Intel has announced plans to view the Programmable Solutions Group (PSG) part of the business as a separate company and launch an IPO for it within the next few years.

PSG refers to the development of programmable chips (FGPAs), which have multiple use cases ranging from data centres to medicine, as the chips can be re-programmed to fit users’ needs.

With this increased demand, however, comes the need to create more new chips, particularly if Intel wants to keep up with competitors in Taiwan. This is guaranteed to be an expensive task and, if successful, the IPO could provide the necessary capital to help support this.

This sector is a significant part of Intel’s business, and Intel would retain a majority shareholding initially.

Databricks

Databricks is a software business that pioneered a cloud-based data storage platform using machine learning, among other things, to address the growing demand for keeping and organising companies’ online information.

Its AI and machine learning capabilities has gained the platform much attention over the past couple of years. Although there’s no set date, the company is likely to go public within the next year. It is, however, remaining cautious and are waiting for economic conditions to improve before they launch.

Founder and CEO Ali Ghodsi recently noted that ‘We are ready to do it. We can press a button if we want to.’ The CEO also noted it would take about two months to be fully prepared for a launch. The company’s CFO Dave Conte previously took both Splunk and Loudcloud public.

Revolut

Revolut, the app-based bank headquartered in the UK with more than 45 million registered users, was founded in 2015 and has been a regulated electronic money institution since 2016.

Rumours of a Revolut IPO have been circulating since 2022 when the company first expressed interest in a public listing. Difficult market conditions caused by many factors including the Russo-Ukrainian War, high inflation, and high interest rates had previously forced to company to delay any plans of an IPO.

Revolut won its banking licence in July 2024, and despite some misgiving on corporate governance, an IPO seems likely to come sooner rather than later.

Discord

San Francisco’s Discord describes itself as a ‘voice over internet protocol company’. More simply put, it’s an online platform that seeks to connect users with similar interests, as well as friends and family, into groups and communities.

Back in September 2021, the company was valued at $15 billion after raising $500 million in funding.
This was more than double the firm’s previous valuation of $7.3 billion. It’s thought that the company’s valuation will be higher still once it goes public.

As of yet, there’s no set date for Discord’s public listing and, with such a quiet IPO market it may be a few years down the line. That said, the much-anticipated listing is still likely to happen sometime
soon provided market conditions improve.

Klarna

This Swedish buy-now-pay-later start-up first announced their desire to launch in 2021. Back then they expected this to happen within a year, but the unstable economic conditions are likely to have caused the company to hold off.

Although market conditions remain difficult, CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski has stated that the company has now met all the conditions he deems necessary for an IPO. This included developing a sustainable business model with room for growth and becoming well-established in the US — indeed, the US is now Klarna’s single biggest market by revenue.

It’s now just a case of waiting for market conditions to improve before Klarna lists, perhaps as soon as Q1 2025. Klarna reached a peak valuation of $45.6 billion in mid-2021, though in this era of tightened monetary policy is thought to be closer to circa $20 billion today.

Stripe

Stripe has talked about going public for more than two years. The payments titan saw payments of more than $1 trillion for the first time in 2023 — up 25% compared to 2022, and it was also cash flow positive last year.

Major investor and venture capital firm Sequoia Capital has publicly confirmed it values Stripe at a whopping $70 billion, acknowledged as the value point when as it attempts to increase its shareholding.

Stripe now includes Airbnb, Amazon, Atlassian, OpenAI and Uber, BMW, Ford, Le Monde, Maersk and River Island as customers. Perhaps its most valuable offering is the checkout and multi-party payment processing, including direct bank payments via open banking provided as a SaaS service.

Stubhub

Stubhub is a key player in ticketing in the US and is aiming for an IPO valuation of at least $16.5 billion. The business has been working with investment banks Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan for several years now to make this dream a reality.

It was bought by eBay back in 2007 for just $300 million but was then reacquired by co-founder Eric Baker in 2020 (through Viagogo) for some $4 billion. While there is stiff competition in the space from the likes of Live Nation, post-pandemic demand for live performances has been extreme — driven by ultra-popular artists like Taylor Swift and Coldplay.

Upcoming Asia IPOs

Which pre-IPO Asia companies should you follow?

1. ByteDance
2. Ant Group

Bytedance

TikTok parent Bytedance has been considering an IPO for some time — not only does it control one of the most valuable social media apps ever created, but Bytedance also owns multiple other unrelated businesses across Asia.

The real IPO blocker is regulatory concerns on both sides of the Pacific: The Chinese government remains opposed to tech stocks gaining too much power — hence the crackdown in 2020 — and also has strict data protection laws.

Meanwhile, US lawmakers are concerned that TikTok could be forced to hand over data to the Chinese government — and that Bytedance may be under pressure to promote or suppress content on TikTok in line with Chinese government interests. The app remains under the scrutiny of the Committee on Foreign Investment.

For perspective, TikTok has been banned from government devices in the country, and lawmakers have previously argued that that ByteDance must divest its ownership of TikTok.

Ant Group

Ant Group is an affiliate company of Chinese conglomerate Alibaba, which owns 33% of the titan. Ant owns the world’s largest digital payment platform — Alipay — and serves over 1.3 billion users alongside 80 million businesses. Total payment volume rose to CNY118 trillion in mid-2020 and it is arguably the second-largest financial services company in the world behind only Visa.

In October 2020, Ant was on the verge of raising $34.5 billion during what would have been the world’s largest ever IPO valuing the company at $313 billion.

However, the country’s leader Xi Jinping personally intervened to stop the launch; an IPO has been waited for ever since.

Upcoming Australian IPOs

Which companies are mulling a listing on the Australian Securities Exchange?

1. AirTrunk
2. Virgin Australia

AirTrunk

The Australian data centre company was recently exploring the possibility of an IPO on the Australian Securities Exchange. It’s currently valued at AU$20 billion up from just AU$3 billion back in 2020 when the firm was brought by Macquarie Asset Management and PSP.

For context, investment firm Blackstone has now successfully bid this amount for the company — which will likely shelve IPO plans for the time being.

However, if the new owners do list AirTrunk in the future, it could be the biggest IPO on the ASX since Mediabank back in 2014.

AirTrunk was founded in 2015 and operates data centre sites across Australia as well as in Japan and Singapore.The company opened JHB1, a 150MW hyperscale data centre in Malaysia in June, offering infrastructure to power cloud-based AI workloads — and is expanding its MEL1 data centre campus in Melbourne.

Find out how to trade Australian listings

Virgin Australia

For quite some time, Virgin Australia has been heavily rumoured to be preparing for an IPO on the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX), in what would be its second market float. The company initially joined the ASX in 2003 as Virgin Blue Holdings, before being delisted on 17 November 2020 after filing for voluntary administration as a result of the pandemic.

A couple of months later, the firm was bought out of administration by the private equity firm Bain Capital, in a deal worth $572.7 million.

Once passenger numbers started rising, Virgin Australia began openly discussing a return to the ASX, which may come at any time. It’s recently posted a second fiscal year of annual profits, with underlying EBIT up by 18.2% to A$519 million.

Find out how to get exposure to shares like Virgin Australia

Biggest recent IPOs

Some of the biggest recent IPOs include:

1. Reddit
2. Arc Holdings
3. Instacart
4. Birkenstock
5. Porsche AG
6. Saudi Aramco

Reddit

Reddit’s recent launch saw the social media company enter the market with a $6.4 billion valuation, at the top of the expected range. However, this was a discount compared to a private funding round in 2021 which valued the company at some $10 billion.

Reddit has recorded a net loss in each year since its debut in 2005, including losing $90.8m last year. But it boasted 267 million weekly average users at the time of the IPO — and its 1 billion posts held in 100,000 active ‘subreddits’ are perfect for training AI tools.

Reddit’s attempts to become profitable have not always been well received; last year thousands of subreddits temporarily closed during a mass protest over CEO Steve Huffman’s decision to start charging for access to the site’s application programming interface, at the expense of smaller developers.

Find out how to trade US listings

Arm Holdings

Arm Holdings designs microprocessors and related technology found in around 95% of the world’s smartphones.

Back in 2020, Arm’s holding company SoftBank announced a deal for Nvidia to acquire Arm, leading to an estimated $40 billion valuation. In early 2022, however, the deal fell through, with Nvidia and
Arm both citing regulatory challenges as the primary reason.

Despite this, its recent listing could be more profitable than its sale to NVIDIA particularly considering the interest of big tech companies including NVIDIA, Amazon, and Apple who have collectively brought $735 million worth of ARM shares since the launch.

The stock launched on the NASDAQ on 14 September 2023 at $51 per share and rose a further 25%, reaching $63.59 by the end of the first trading day. This resulted in a valuation of $67.9 billion.

Learn how to trade US listings

Instacart

Instacart is a grocery delivery service, founded in 2012, that had been considering a public listing for approximately two years before finally launching on the NASDAQ on 19 September 2023.

In March 2021, after raising $265 million in venture capital funds, the company’s market cap soared to $39 billion – meaning its valuation had more than doubled from its 2020 market cap of $17.7 billion. But early in 2022, the company proactively reduced its valuation to $24 billion and it has since dropped further, to $10 billion.

Upon launch, the company offered 22 million shares at a price of $30 each. On the first day of trading retail investors brought $12 million worth of shares and the price increased by just over 12% reaching $33.70 by the end of the day.

Learn more about the Instacart IPO or find out how to trade US IPOs

Birkenstock

The German shoe company is known for its popular cork-soled sandals, which have significantly grown in popularity since they were first introduced in the 1970s and coined as the ‘ugly shoe’. In fact, partnerships with luxury brands such as Valentino and Dior has helped the shoe to be viewed as a luxury product.

The company launched on the NYSE on 11 October 2023 with a share price of $46 each. By the end of the trading day, Birkenstock’s stocks were priced at $40.20, a drop of 12.61%.

Porsche AG

The Porsche listing was one of the biggest in European history.

The business model is simple; it’s effortlessly one of the top luxury automotive brands in the world. Porsche AG has six core models, including the 911 and Macan. And the brand is popular worldwide, including in the Americas, Europe, and its biggest market China.

Of course, Porsche AG is facing the same headwinds as the rest of the automotive industry, including sky-high inflation and supply chain chaos exacerbated by the Russia-Ukraine war. However, its market position as a luxury good should stand it in good stead through this turbulent times.

The long-term strategy is set out in ‘Porsche Strategy 2030,’ which highlights the expected move towards EVs and even autonomous driving. One central issue will involve its transition to EVs; while 25% of the cars it sold last year were electric, the company also plans to offer ICE cars for the foreseeable future as well.

Saudi Aramco

Saudi Aramco is the world's largest oil producer and most profitable company and held its IPO back in 2019. It raised $25.6 billion from shares worth a total of 1.5% of the company — on a $1.87 trillion valuation. Government ownership remains at 98.5%.

This IPO was not just about money: it shows the world that Saudi is open to foreign investment to help diversify the economy beyond oil and gas. For perspective, the proceeds from the IPO went to the Saudi Public Investment Fund which aims to future-proof the Kingdom.

But for investors and traders, this IPO remains the largest ever.

How to get exposure to IPO stocks

Primary market: buying at the IPO price

If a company has filed for a UK IPO and you want to invest in the stock, you can subscribe to the IPO ahead of the offering with us. By subscribing to the IPO, you’ll receive a stock allocation on the primary market, at the same time and for the same price as institutional investors. This means you can take your position without having to wait for the secondary market to open.

You can access the primary market by creating a share dealing account with us. Note that this is only available for UK IPOs.

Create a share dealing account to get started

Secondary market: buying the stock after the IPO – investing or trading
Once the stock has listed, the secondary market will open, which is where individual investors exchange the stock between themselves.

• It usually takes a few hours for stocks to be available after a US IPO, as is the case with all brokers
• For UK IPOs, stocks should be available to trade from 8am on the day of the listing
• All other IPOs we offer should be available right away, from the time the exchange opens on the day of listing

There are two ways for you to take a position on the secondary market following an initial public offering. You can:

• Invest in the company’s shares by share dealing
• Trade on the company’s share price with spread bets or CFDs

Trading vs investing in IPO shares

When trading a company’s shares with us, you can speculate on the underlying market price with spread bets and CFDs. You won’t take ownership of the shares, so you can speculate on both rising and falling prices, and get certain tax benefits.¹

You’ll only need a small deposit – known as margin – to get full market exposure. Trading on leverage can magnify your profits, but it can also magnify your losses, making it important to have a suitable risk management strategy in place.

Learn how you can manage your risk

When investing in shares with us, you’ll use a share dealing account to buy and sell the underlying stock. Because you’ll own the shares, you can only make money if the share price goes up – but you would also be entitled to any dividend payments that are made, and you’ll have shareholder rights.

To open a share dealing position, you’ll need to put down the full value of your investment. When investing, you’ll never lose more than this initial outlay.

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